In distributed SIP/SIMPLE server applications server clusters are used to manage network loading problems by utilizing mechanisms such as load balancing, where new subscription requests are distributed equitably among the servers in the cluster. However, a situation may arise where multiple subscriptions are maintained by different servers within a server cluster for the same resource, resulting in certain inefficiencies. For example, each server that maintains a subscription for a resource's presence information will typically subscribe to receive the resource's presence authorization rules from a presence rule server in order to keep up with any changes that occur within the presence authorization rules during the life of the subscription. Thus, where multiple subscriptions are maintained by different servers within a server cluster for the same resource, each of these servers will maintain separate subscriptions to the same presence authorization rules, thus creating a heavy load on the presence rules server due to the computing resources needed for maintaining each separate subscription. Whenever there's a change in the presence rules, the presence rules server must send the same change notification message to each of the servers that have a subscription to receive the rules, resulting in increased network load and processing load. Each of these servers also allocates resources for maintaining retrieved copies of presence authorization rules, incurring the additional cost of managing multiple subscriptions.